One of the mission’s barrack-rooms had been specially prepared during the afternoon to lodge the newcomers. There they found bunks with woolen mattresses, sheets, blankets and heaters.
All morning on the following day, June 3, Saint-Clair and Girard, with Corsat, Pilou, Romski, Berge, Dopp and Wolf, worked to clean, reset, oil and test all the mechanical parts and the overall structure of the RC3 and RC4. Affecting a greater impassivity than they actually felt, all the members of the English mission devoted themselves to their normal occupations and the various tasks planned for that morning, but a lookout climbed up to the summit of the high basalt cliff at the foot of which Elmwood station had been built and kept watch on the ocean, where bergs of every shape and size were floating. The Frenchmen and Englishmen often raised their heads to look up at the top of the cliff.
Suddenly, a British flag was displayed. The Uberalles had been sighted. The chronometer showed 11:55 a.m.
Since Cape Flora’s ice had broken up, a wharf of wood and iron had been extended from the shore into the sea. That morning, Sir Patrick Swires had ordered the launch of two large launches put at the expedition’s disposal, which had a flotilla of 25 small boats, not counting Eskimo kayaks. At 12:35 p.m., Sir Patrick and Saint-Clair leapt aboard one of these launches; propelled by four oarsmen, it sped rapidly towards a long black mass with a metallic superstructure, which was held immobile by two cables. The second launch followed, with a further four oarsmen.
“Laure!”
“Leo!”
Notwithstanding the presence of the solemn Englishman, the two lovers embraced and Saint-Clair kissed Grisyl on both cheeks.
By 2 p.m., the entire companies of the mission and the submarine having worked well in concert, the disembarkation of passengers and cargo was complete. At 3 p.m., after a late lunch, the supreme council of war was finally opened.
Everyone who would have a part to play in the action of the Nyctalope’s final battle against Lucifer–some of them doubtless quite unexpected, by others if not by themselves–was gathered in the vast common room of Elmwood House, which had been cleared of everything except the table and chairs: Sir Patrick Swires, who was immediately appointed as the council’s chairman; Professor Lourmel; Laurence Païli and Grisyl; Leo Saint-Clair, Corsat and Pilou; Lieutenant Jacques Saincer; Captain Girard, Lieutenant Romski, Sergeant Berge, Corporal Dopp and Wolf; Ensign Donat, second-in-command of the Uberalles; Captain Berton and Cadet Dupuis, the pilots of the RC1 and RC2, with their co-pilots Bompard and Sylvain and their mechanics Aymard and Garet; and the eight principal members of the expedition: Elias Carter, the geographer; Anderson, an electrical engineer; Yerkes, a meteorololgist; Ward, a physician; Gaddesden, a naval officer; MacEwen, a botanist; Merton, a physicist and chemist; and Mallory, the chief of staff. There were 28 individuals in all.
At a nod from the Nyctalope, Sir Patrick Swires stood up and opened the session. With extreme gravity, he wished the Nyctalope, Professor Lourmel and their auxiliaries the best of luck in their enterprise, and he terminated his speech–as moving as it was laconic–by placing himself under Saint-Clair’s command and putting all the senior members of his expedition, their staff and equipment, at the service of the cause that had brought the Nyctalope and his company to the polar regions.
It was Professor Lourmel who replied, in a manner that was just as grave, laconic and moving. He thanked Sir Patrick Swires and called upon Leo Saint-Clair, the leader, to reveal his plan of action without further ado. He stated, parenthetically, that Rupert VI, who was sitting in a corner of the room, was in a hypnotic trance and could be interrogated, if the need arose, so long as he remained free–as he evidently was for the moment–from any magnetic empery emanating from Lucifer.
“I imagine,” the Nyctalope said, “that Baron Glô von Warteck, certain of success on June 10, is devoting all his strength to his preparations and making certain of his victory, and will not be paying any attention to what is happening in the rest of the world.”
“That’s certainly so, my friend,” affirmed Professor Lourmel. “I’ve been interrogating Rupert VI during the voyage of the Uberalles, and I questioned him on that particular matter. He answered me in terms identical to those that you have just used to express the same thought.”
“In that case, let’s listen first and act afterwards,” said Sir Patrick. “Would you care to begin, Monsieur Saint-Clair?”
With an imposing calmness, a clarity that astonished even Professor Lourmel, and a simplicity that made his explanations clear even to Wolf, Leo Saint-Clair revealed his plan.
VI. The Octopus 7
The Bahama Channel in the westernmost reaches of the Atlantic Ocean is surely one of the most picturesque maritime routes in the world. It is a deep oceanic valley separating the island of Cuba from the Lucayan Islands, or the Bahamas. It is crossed by the tropic of Cancer and the 80th meridian west of Paris. Its green and blue waters are sprinkled with an infinity of little islets and reefs; even though it is easily understandable that it a good 500 kilometers in length, it is sometimes difficult to accept that it is 300 kilometers wide in places; one is so constantly within sight of land that that one has the impression of gliding through the middle of an archipelago.
Having stayed for several hours in the waters of British Guiana, Raymond de Ciserat had the idea of showing his wife and Mattol a little of the Greater Antilles, as he had already showed them the Lesser ones. Afterwards, he set a north-westward course, rounded the island of Trinidad, went diagonally across the Caribbean Sea, went through the Jamaica channel and the Windward Passage between Cuba and Haiti and along the northern cost of Cuba into the Bahama Channel.
At midday on June 3, he came to a stop. The Lampas was at sea off the little port of Jibara, at 78 degrees, 15 minutes and 22 seconds west longitude and 22 degrees, 18 minutes and six seconds north latitude. For about four cables to starboard of the submarine, which was afloat with its propellers motionless, at the mercy of the gentle waves, the sea was dotted with reefs; they formed a minuscule archipelago half a kilometer long and 200 meters wide, whose highest altitude was no more than four or five meters above sea-level at high tide.
On the deck, along with Raymond de Ciserat, who was holding his sextant, were his first mate, Luc Bonnery, who was making calculations on a notepad, Mattol, who was staring out to sea, Irène and Miss Ellen, who were leaning on the guard-rail with Henri Prillant between them.
“Oh, look, Miss! Look!” cried the boy with the enthusiastic ardor that made him desire all sorts of things. “Miss! Look at the seagulls over the rocks! I bet they’re full of crabs and shrimps! And mussels and limpets too! Madame Irène, will the commander let us get off again?”
On the morning of the previous day, as much to amuse the two women and the child as to see whether Irène and Henri would continue to be free of the torments of abominable memory, “commander” Raymond had authorized a disembarkation that had lasted for two hours on a bank of reefs analogous to the one at which they were now looking. The “expeditionaries” had brought back two basketfuls of crabs, shrimps, mussels, limpets and other mollusks, on which everyone had feasted at the midday meal.
“Madame,” said Miss Ellen, “may we ask the commander?”
“Of course,” Irène relied, smiling at Henri, who had turned his large eyes towards her pleadingly–and she called out: “Raymond!”
Since they had left the Bermudas behind, the naval officer had been enjoying life. For ten days, while idly taking his Lampas through the Greater and Lesser Antilles, he had resumed his honeymoon with Irène, to the point at which he had almost completely forgotten the tragic incidents in Venice and the drama of the Bermudas. The young spouses had no doubt that the Nyctalope would defeat Lucifer conclusively, and that final victory was pending. The monster was muzzled and choked, since he no longer cast spells!
Mattol, meanwhile, kept Irène and Henri under observation. He saw them tranquil and happy. He shared Ciserat’s and Miss Ellen’s confidence in the Nyctalope’
s inevitable victory–but he feared that Lucifer might manifest himself again before succumbing. Not wishing to trouble the happiness that reigned aboard the Lampas unnecessarily, though, he kept his fears and apprehensions to himself. Whenever the young woman and the boy went up on to the emergent vessel’s deck, and especially when they went ashore, as they had several times, he went with them, ready to grab the child and draw Irène away at a run and to hurl himself with them into the submarine, which would immediately dive...
“What do you want, darling?” Raymond asked, turning round in response to his wife’s call.
She gestured towards the bank of reefs and relayed Henri’s request, adding: “I confess that I too would be delighted to catch crabs and shrimps.”
“Very well, go!” said Raymond.
“I’ll accompany you,” Mattol said, simply. “I need to stretch my legs. I’ll carry the mussel-basket, if there is one.”
“Bravo! Bravo! Thank you, commander!” cried the excited Henri, clapping his hands.
Bonnery shouted an order.
A metallic creaking was audible almost immediately; in the Lampas’s bow, a section of deck was raised up and set back and a dinghy rose up slowly, furnished with four oars and a tiller. A sailor appeared on the port side of the dinghy, jumped on to the deck, disengaged the boat from the little mobile dock to which it as attached, and slid it into the water.
“Embark!” said Raymond.
“What about the nets, the knives, the baskets, the beach-sandals?” cried Henri.
“Everything’s in the dinghy, Monsieur!” confirmed the sailor, whose name was Martin, and who had the particular responsibility of ferrying and watching over these fishing expeditions and pleasure-trips.
Henri was the first to pass from the deck into the dinghy; Irène and Miss Ellen followed him, then Mattol, and finally the sailor, who cast off the mooring rope before taking up two of the oars. Mattol took the tiller, and the light boat sped towards the reefs. It only required a few minutes for Martin to arrive in a little creek where the water was perfectly calm, permitting a comfortable landing and an easy disembarkation.
When Raymond saw the two women, the child and Mattol leap on to the rocks, he waved to them and called out. They answered immediately, in joyful voices, their white silhouettes gesticulating.
“My dear Luc,” Raymond said to his second-in-command. “Stay here, please. If Martin moves the dinghy, make sure you always keep it in view, at the closest possible range.”
“Understood!”
After a last glance towards his dear wife, the officer went back into the Lampas. He had to write a letter to Professor Lourmel, which he intended to take to Havana, where there was a deep-water harbor. If he did not profit from the hour when Irène was not on board, he would never find the time to write it–which would not please the Professor, who would expect at least eight pages stuffed with details of life on board, Irène’s physical and mental health, and a page dealing with Henri and Miss Ellen for the special attention of Monsieur Prillant.
The bank of reefs was everything for which young Henri had hoped: a host of rocks, in the midst of which snaked channels that filled and emptied with the ebb and flow of the tide. Scattered here and there were pools full of multicolored algae, whose sides were replete with picturesque and ludicrous animals. Shellfish of every description–including conches, murexes, scallops, mitres, spindles, cones, abalones of the kind called “Virgin’s slippers” and downy limpets–remained firmly in place, while sea-urchins in holes in the rock waved their spines. Crabs fled sideways while transparent shrimps darted hither and yon like rays of light.
What joy! What excitement! What cries of triumph!
Irène and Miss Ellen–and Mattol too–each had a net in hand and a basket that was rapidly filling up. They were amusing themselves as much as little Henri. Everyone had left their shoes in the dinghy, replacing them with the cord sandals that the boy called “beach sandals.” Thanks to their culottes, they could go a little way into the water, in order to reach the shells and creatures that were too far way from the edges of the channels and pools.
Engrossed by their fishing, however–which had all the ups and downs of a hunt in full flight–the four explorers gradually drew apart. Miss Ellen always took care never to lose sight of Henri, and often sacrificed her own pleasure to follow his comings and goings, but Mattol–excited by glimpses of an enormous crab lodged in a crack, which occasionally put forth one of its pincers in an attempt to seize a piece of white chiffon dangling just out of range–allowed Irène to get further and further away from him. The young woman had told Henri, childishly, that she would bring back more shrimps than he would have of animals and shellfish of every sort. Using her net skillfully, she went from channel to channel and pool to pool, with the result that she crossed the entire bank of reefs and was out of sight of Ellen, Henri, Mattol and Martin, who were nearby, as well as Luc Bonnery, standing on the deck of the Lampas.
Abruptly, Irène became conscious of her isolation. She stood up and looked around at the chaos of the arid reefs, grey beneath the tropical heat of the bright Sun, and the empty immensity of the Ocean. In the distance, beneath flossy clouds, there was a blur that must have been an islet. There was no other sound but the lapping of the silky water in the inlets in the rocks.
“God, it’s hot!” Irène sighed.
She suddenly felt exhausted, her limbs weak, her neck aching, her ears ringing. Mechanically, she set down her net and basket on a flat rock. She sat down, her eyes unseeing, her brain devoid of thought, her entire body possessed by a kind of extreme languor. She sat without moving, with her elbows on her knees and her chin in her cupped hands, until she felt a sudden violent frisson and stood up stiffly, shivering.
A voice had resounded within her–a familiar voice, seemingly forgotten but whose tone, accent and least inflection she suddenly remembered. The voice of Lucifer! She recognized it, with horror and alarm.
“Irène! Irène!” the infernal voice called. Almost immediately afterwards, Irène heard it echo again within her–inside her head, it seemed!
“Irène,” the voice said, “here I am again. You recognize me, don’t you, with no hesitation? That’s because I want you too. Listen to me, Irène, because I also want you to answer me, freely, willingly, independently. For me to speak to you, though, I have had to induce the commotion that initially made you feel exhausted... For I’m so far away! Irène, you have all your free will; you have the power to do anything you please, even to refuse to listen to me, to flee, to call Raymond or Mattol, to put yourself to sleep in order to produce the illusion of having confounded my empery–but be afraid for those you love, for their extreme distress...”
There was a silence, and a violent ringing in her ears; then the voice resumed: “Are you listening to me, Irène? Will you listen? Answer me. Distant as I am, I shall hear you.”
Clearly, but in a whisper, Irène said: “Yes, I’ll listen.” Her entire body shuddered again with horror and alarm, and an inexpressible despair crept into her soul.
“Perfect!” said the voice. “Well, Irène, do you remember the letter that one of my men delivered to you in Le Havre, when you got out of the car that had brought you from Paris?”
“Yes, I remember,” Irène stammered. Her eyes were dilated, her head tilted back, her hands clenched upon her bosom; if anyone had seen her at that moment they would have thought her mad, or in a painful ecstasy.
“Do you remember exactly what I told you?” the voice continued. “You read that letter so many times before giving it to the Nyctalope–you know it by heart. Tell me what I wrote...”
“No!” The voice had been mocking, sneering; Irène was indignant. “No!” she repeated, proud to demonstrate, now, that she was indeed free. “No, I won’t!”
“I like that rebelliousness, Irène,” the voice retorted, in a tone that was grave and harsh. “Your voluntary submission will be all the more precious. I shall then recite the letter myself.
It’s necessary that you understand perfectly the alternatives between which you shall soon have to choose, and that you cannot deny what you know!”
Lucifer burst out laughing–and that diabolical laugh resounded in the unfortunate woman’s skull to the point at which she moaned in pain. When the laughter died away, the voice went on.
“Do you remember the date, my dearest? May 7. Today is June 3. Our relationship is 26 days older, and very loving. On May 7, I wrote to you that there were two alternatives between which you would have to choose before June 10.
“Either you would willingly submit to me, or I would kill, at a distance and after 12 hours of terrible tortures, first your Aunt Luce, then your uncle the Professor, then your friend Mattol, and then your husband Raymond. Then I would take control of you, despite anything you might do, and you would live with the remorse and shame of having sacrificed, uselessly, the four people that you love.
“I added that, once you have reached a decision, I would give you the appropriate instructions to render it effective.”
The voice fell silent.
Irène wrung her hands. A terrible idea flared up in her mind: to die! I have only to take a step and let myself fall, mouth agape, without struggling. The sea would soon swallow me up. Everyone would think it was an accident.
But the voice resumed: “No, no, Irène, you shall not kill yourself. In that respect, alone, I confiscate your liberty. Try!”
She wanted to defy the frightful invisible monster, distant but so abominably present. With a desperate thrust of her entire body, she threw herself...
But she did not fall. It seemed that a wall had sprung up in front of her–a wall as elastic as it was invisible, by which she was first arrested and held upright, then gently but irresistibly pushed back.
The voice went on: “Irène, you will never kill yourself. Other than that, you are free. But to prove to you how merciless I shall be if you do not come to me of your own free will, I shall make you witness an edifying spectacle. Miss Ellen...”
The Nyctalope vs Lucifer 3: The Triumph of the Nyctalope Page 6